NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Kentico Software, a leader in customer experience management, today unveiled the results of a new Website Marketing Survey, the latest installment of Kentico's ongoing Digital Experience research series. The announcement was made from the Customer Engagement Technology Worldconference being held this week in New York.

According to the survey, 57% of the general public believes websites have improved over the past five years in terms of design, functionality, usability, content, usefulness, and other elements. 31% believe websites haven't changed much while 12% report they've gotten worse. Users aged 18-29 were slightly more generous in their response than survey participants overall with 68% believing the website experience has improved over the past five years.

Personalization Prevails

When it comes to personalization, 70% believe at least half of the websites they visit offer products, services or content in a way that caters well to their particular interests. 35% say about half of all the websites they visit seem customized. 24% say about 75%, 23% say about 25%, and 12% say about all of them. Only 7% believe virtually none of the sites they visit appeal to their particular needs.

Site Loyalty: Reserved for the Few

How many sites will the average user return to regularly? Most (41%) regularly visit up to 5 websites for non-work purposes. 34% are regular readers of 6-10 sites, 14% say 11-15 sites, and 4% say as many as 16-20 sites. Only 5% visit more than 20 sites for personal use.

"Over the past five years, marketers have been implementing a variety of new methods and tools to optimize the website experience for their customers, and it appears these efforts have not gone unnoticed," said Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas. "Still, with most users revisiting only a small handful of sites, maintaining user loyalty with sites that are compelling, personalized, and intuitive remains a key prerogative for digital marketers today."

Creating Successful Website Strategies

To compete on the modern Internet, websites must be differentiated, compelling, valuable, and easy to use. Every successful website checklist should include:

Responsive design support for consistent mobile experiences across all devices

Real-time web analytics

An ongoing strategy for message optimization using A/B and MVT testing

A marketing automation solution to manage campaigns while freeing up marketing time to focus on more productive tasks

An ongoing strategy for content personalization that provides an immersive experience

A buyer persona between sales and marketing

A lead scoring program that focuses on delivering leads at the right time

Consistent e-mail marketing

The Kentico Email Marketing Survey is the third installment of an ongoing Kentico Digital Experience Research series that was kicked off earlier this year with the Kentico Customer Experience Survey and continued with the Kentico Mobile Experience Survey and Email Marketing Survey. Among prior survey highlights: Only 32% feel email marketing has improved over the past 5 years. 85% use smartphones to comparison shop, and 44% will never return to sites that aren't mobile friendly. Word of mouth (28%), company websites (25%) and in-store experience (18%) weighed most heavily on strengthening or eroding brand affinity. 69% expressing an overwhelming eagerness in allowing the collection of their personal data in exchange for more customized service.

More than 300 US residents 18 years old and over participated in the Kentico Website Marketing Survey, conducted online during the month of August 2013.

About Kentico CMS

Kentico CMS is an enterprise Web Content Management System and Customer Experience Management solution that provides a complete set of features for building websites, intranets, community sites and e-commerce solutions on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform, on-premise or in the Cloud. It supports mobile websites, SEO, document management, online marketing tools, multilingual websites, and multisite management, and comes out of the box with 70 ready-to-use modules, 400 configurable web parts, and source code available by request.

About Kentico Software

Kentico provides an affordable, award-winning integrated marketing solution that's easy to use but also highly customizable for powerful real-time customer-centric marketing across multiple channels, on-premise or in the Cloud. Founded in 2004, Kentico is headquartered in the Czech Republic with offices in the US, UK, and Australia. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with 1,100 digital agency partners, Kentico powers more than 18,000 websites in 90 countries. Customers include Bacardi; Great British Chefs; Gibson; Mazda; Microsoft; Mighty River Power; Run and Become; Sony; Vodafone.

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